In our ongoing series, we're taking you inside the Icelantic
headquarters for some one-on-one with the creators of the award
winning Icelantic AT Boards.
This week we're bringing you Annelise Loevlie -- Icelantic's
international sales manager, and so much more!
From monthly bookkeeping to writing PR statements to
selling Icelantic overseas, Annelise's energy and intelligence
keeps Icelantic skis in the minds and on the feet of skiers
around the world.
Cassi: Where did you go to school?
Annelise: I went to the University of Vermont in Burlington.
Cassi: What did you study?
Annelise: I went for International Business and Spanish.
Cassi: How did you get in with Icelantic?
Annelise: Ben and I have been friends since we were like 12.
So I've actually been with it kind of the whole time. I guess
officially he approached me and asked me to help him with
international sales.
Cassi: What is your job?
Annelise: Gosh, I do a lot. My business card says Global Sales
and Marketing Manager, but I also take care of the company's
finances. You know, I monitor cash flow and do the books and
stuff like that. My year's pretty cyclical, you know, different
seasons I do different things.
Like right now and into the fall I'm kind of focusing my efforts
on marketing, like print advertising, getting those ready for
magazines. Writing articles and different press releases and
trying to get those published. Winter we begin to prepare for
Vegas and ISPO, which is the trade show in Germany.
So I'm setting up appointments with accounts in Germany, getting
all our samples ready and all the samples ready for ISPO. So then
all winter long and spring I'm just selling. So that's the
international sales part, in the winter and spring, selling and
traveling and closing deals. All year round I do all the finances
every month, but spring is like when I really sit down with the
investors and Ben, and get our money basically.
Right now we're actually in the middle of moving our office down
to Santa Fe Blvd, in Downtown Denver. We got a sweet art gallery
space. So we're going to just have like all of our art and skis
displayed. It's going to be an outlet for a retail store and then
we're also going to have traveling exhibits, you know every month
for First Fridays that are going to come in and bring in a bunch
of people.
Cassi: What kind of exhibits?
Annelise: I think we're going to focus the first couple openings
on people in the industry, whether it's skiing or skating or
snowboarding, and that can be artists, you know, like fine
artists or photographers or sculptors, anything like that. We're
not going to limit to skiing by any means. It's just that most of
our connections to artists are pretty much in the industry right
now.
So, it's going to be interesting. We're like starting a
completely new business. It's really exciting.
Cassi: Do you have your first artists lined up for First Fridays?
Annelise: We have a couple that we're going to interview. Parr,
our artist Travis Parr, is definitely going to be exhibiting.
Then we have a photographer Jeff Nass, who's probably going to
be exhibiting some of his photos, and then a couple others, like
action photographers and maybe a couple other fine artists.
Cassi: Will Travis be selling his art?
Annelise: Yeah he is. He's going to have some pieces up here
unrelated to the skis, just like some of his artwork, but we're
also going to be selling prints of the top sheets, which is going
to be really cool I think, and then apparel and also skis.
Cassi: What magazines are you advertising in?
Annelise: We're doing Powder Magazine, Freeskier and Backcountry.
We're doing two full-page color ads in each of those.
Cassi: How do you choose which magazines you advertise in?
Annelise: Pretty much by their demographic, and also we have ski
reviews in each of those magazines. You know, they asked us to
review our skis, so we kind of go with that. We've established
really good relationships with all three of those magazines.
Cassi: Where else do you send your press releases?
Annelise: I'm kind of in the midst of two. One: I'm working on a
press release to announce that Never Summer is making our skis,
which is pretty big in the industry. You know, Never Summer
wanted to wait like a year, before we did anything like that.
And then the other one is the gallery, so probably, to like the
Westword and the Denver Post, like the Mountain Gazette, that
kind of localized thing. And also it would be great to get them
on like the Freeskier website and powder.com.
Cassi: Do you use your localized marketing to help sell to
international distributors?
Annelise: Yeah, I do actually. It's nice because it kind of
credits our company. It kind of shows them that we are out there,
in the US at least, and that people are reading about us and
knowing and asking about us. But I've gotten really lucky too,
with distributors who are just really gun ho about the products.
They've gotten several articles in like their own ski magazines.
I have this awesome cover of a magazine in Russia. It's like this
beautiful Russian girl in very Russian ski clothes, just holding
a pair of our shamans.
Cassi: How many publications internationally have written about
Icelantic?
Annelise: I don't know if I can name them off the top of my head.
Like Dark Summer is a big one. It's out of the UK. Quite a few,
a couple in Sweden, couple in France.
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Stay tuned for part 2, where Annelise will reveal how to sell
skis to a Frenchman, and much more!
Peace and Snow,
Icelantic
P.S. -- Did you miss a past issue of THE FIRST DEGREE? No
worries, we've got an archive!
http://www.icelanticboards.com/news-archive.htm
P.P.S. -- Last chance to grab 2006/07 apparel!
http://www.icelanticboards.com/apparel.htm
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Copyright, Icelantic LLC, 2007
http://www.icelanticboards.com